Marx's Criticism Of Religion And Its Contemporary Value

The criticism of religion must lead to the task of the emancipation of mankind and be completed by that,since religion is the expression of the servitude of human being in real life and the defense of it by making up a delusive transcendence,while the emancipation must be based on historical materialism,which explains the realistic relation of human beings and its negative development,because the emancipation can only be accomplished in the realistic relation of mankind and by changing it,since human being is nothing but a real existent.Marx's criticism of religion and historical materialism are unified in the theme of the emancipation of mankind,in which historical materialism as the basic method of his criticism of religion and his criticism of religion as a practical question strongly associated with the emancipation.Marx's criticism of religion is based on his inheritance of philosophy of Enlightenment,which establishes the main questions and basic methods of religious criticism:Rousseau removes the theological inclination in the doctrine of original sin and searches for the causes of suffering and desiring religion in social live and the civilization,associates the question of emancipation with religion basing on social criticism;the atheists carry on the debate between empiricism and theory of“Innate Ideas”,explain the origin of religion with human's emotion,such as fear,which comes out of cheat and ignorance,and turn the religious question as a question of theory into a practical question;French materialism,which is a result of the struggle against metaphysics in 17^th century,comprehends the human being with natural material,denies the existence of a transcendental world.The Young Hegelians reveal the contradiction between belief and rationality in Hegel's philosophy of religion in their criticism of religion and generate the self-consciousness philosophy,which enthrones the subjectivity extremely to replace the godhead and forms the theme of Marx's criticism of religion,the emancipation of mankind.However,the Young Hegelian limit themselves to the paradigm of speculative philosophy and are criticized by Feuerbach,who insists on the materialism combining humanitarianism and naturalism,and points out the consistence between speculative philosophy and theology:they both attempt to extricate the experiential life by setting up the transcendental substance.Under the inspiration of Feuerbach,Marx exposes the theological premise of the self-consciousness philosophy,which is to replace the importance of objectivity relationship in reality and practical struggle by theoretical critique and the emancipation of mind.The emancipation of mankind,as the theme,spurs Marx to combine the criticism of religion and state,which is fulfilled in his debate with Bauer on Jewish question.Following the tradition of German classical philosophy,Bauer believes that the freedom of human being can only be realized by overthrowing the domination of religion and establishing an atheistic real state,and sees the state in itself as the freedom in reality.On the contrary,Marx points out that the state is not in contrary to religion and can not realize the emancipation of mankind,because it only makes up a realm independent of the reality with defects in order to avoid meeting the practical problems,just like what religion does,and the independence of state and religion is the result of the change of the mode of production,in which the capitalist mode of production makes the state and religion from the necessary parts of reproduction into the external and protective factors of the exploitative relation.Along with the debate on the Jewish question,Marx elaborates his criticism of religion by the critique of civil society,imputes the foundation of Judaism and Christianity to the money worship in economic life and points out that the narrowness of Judaism originates in the subordinate status of money in the pre-modern world,while the dominant role of money in modern society comes with a religion like Christianity,which breaks through all restrictions and becomes a worldwide dominant religion.Meanwhile,Marx proposes the idea of“commodity fetishism”in order to explain the defects of civil society with the character of religious faith:the creatures of mankind,the divine image of god,commodity,money,etc.now obtain the character independent of the mankind himself and control conversely the will and action of the human beings.Since the civil society is under the domination of money,the freedom of religious belief in modernity has nothing to do with the freedom of mankind but only the reflection in cultural life of the free competition in economy.Marx's criticism of the capitalist mode of production explains thoroughly the reasons why the religion grows and flourishes in modern society:money as the historical product of social division of labor,distorts and puts upside down the social character of production and life and prevent people to understand themselves in their practical activities,which supplies the possibility for religion to survive;the system of wage labor,industrial capitalism,financial capital and the infinite expansion of capital cause the separation of labor with means of production,the domination of productive process by capital,social crisis and unemployment,which only exist in a capitalist society,bring extreme pain to people and force them to ask for comfort in religion,which creates the need for religion.Therefore,the demise of religion can be possible only after the proletarian revolution,which fundamentally altereds the capitalist mode of production and eliminates the conflict between the necessary labor and free development,which means the emancipation of mankind by himself,not in the other world,but in the social life.Marx's criticism of religion develops along with the change of major theme of the times:the political struggle between workers'party and religious conservative requires the Marxist in 19^th explain clearly the fundamental differences behind the superficial similarity between scientific socialism and religious movement,which is the deference of the classes,the mode of production they embody and their attitudes toward revolution;facing the disasters,which the capitalism brings and the setbacks,which the socialism suffers,the Marxist in 20^th seek for idealist and transcendental force in religion except criticism of it;the religious conflicts due to the capitalist global hegemony in 21^st today require us to draw lessons from the principle and methods of Marx'criticism of religion,extricate ourselves from the theoretical framework which only limits itself inside the developed capitalist society,expose the fraud of civilization conflict and respond the religious problems from angles of the third world and position beyond capitalism.